Design notes and general musings from "Distant Star Games," which is really just Ewen Cluney (aka Neko Ewen). Stuff about whatever games I'm working on, games I'm reading or playing, and RPG-related stuff I'm thinking about.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Japanese RPGs!

After hearing what Andy K had to say about Maid RPG and Yuuyake Koyake, two RPGs put out by a small Japanese publisher called Sunset Games, I decided I really, really wanted to pick them up. Since they're not listed on Amazon Japan or anything (unlike the stuff from, say, Enterbrain and F.E.A.R.), I wound up trying to email them directly about it. Shortly thereafter I got a reply, in English no less (even though I'd emailed them in Japanese...) asking if PayPal was okay.

So, today I got them in the mail. It'll take a while for me to read through them (though the base rulebook of the Maid RPG is only 32 pages), but they both look really neat, and not just in terms of the nice artwork.

Maid RPG in some ways feels like it's the otaku world's answer to Paranoia, in that in the game the player characters are maids and the GM is their Master. Especially if you include the two supplements, it takes the concept and runs with it headlong into every genre and genre trope imaginable, and maids can range from a cute girl-next-door to a combat android. Character creation is mostly random, I think to reinforce the game's general atmosphere ("Let's roll... Looks like you'll have blue hair!" "But I don't like blue!" "Too bad! Blue hair it is!"). It uses many, many tables to bring all kinds of crazy anime stuff into the game.

Yuuyake Koyake feels a bit more artsy, and as I understand it is about girls who straddle the line between human and animal, childhood and adulthood. Even the character sheet is adorable.